He was born in 1954 in Anshun, Guizhou, China; Yang now lives in Shenzhen and Chengdu. He is a free photographer and a contract photographer of Agency VU. In order to photograph the Roman Catholic Church in Northwest China, for ten consecutive years he concentrated on and photographed the subject matter. In the same way he dedicated another ten years in photographing Tibetan Buddhism. Religion is about faith, about spirit, and about human mind. Be his photography the result of rational consciousness or a vague echo in the atmosphere of the time, the outcome is doubtless: he focuses on the problem of the time which encounters everyone—people are looking for attachment and spiritual sustenance in an age of spiritual crisis.